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Seo Unleashed…WHITE PAPERAbstractThis white paper mainly deals with the concepts and strategies for Search EngineOptimization (SEO). It starts by discussing the importance of SEO, how it hasevolved over the years and what lies in the future. Based on various SEO projectexperiences, a detailed SEO approach has also been recommended for thewebsites. The white paper also covers various best practices that a site shouldemploy or follow for the web site optimization, keyword optimization, promotionand Link building strategies in detail. It discusses how Social media marketing andSEO are inseparable and some of the latest trends in the SEO space. This whitepaper can be used as a guide or best practice document for any website that wantsto achieve a higher ranking in the web search engine results pages.Introduction - What is Search Engine Optimization?among the search engine’s organic results.Good search engine optimization willensure that a web page appears higherin the search engine results for a range ofrelevant, specific and valuable search termsor queries. SEO can also target differentkinds of searches, including image search,local search, and industry-specific verticalsearch engines. SEO efforts may involve asite’s coding, presentation, and structure,as well as fixing problems that couldprevent search engine indexing programsfrom fully spidering a site. The higher yourwebsite ranks in the results of Google,Yahoo, Bing etc., the greater the chancethat your site will be visited by many, whichin turn would skyrocket your sales andbring a high return on investment thanany other comparable forms of marketing.Observing sensible search engineoptimization procedures can also make asite easy for the search engines to indexand making it more accessible to the users.Say for example if you have built a websitefor “property sell and buy”, then you needto ensure that your site gets listed in thetop internet search results for prioritykeywords like “buy property” or “sellproperty”, without which you will fail toattract internet visitors to your site, in turnlosing out on the conversions and sale.Organizations spend millions of dollarsand work hard to build a great website,but fail to attract visitors to their site. Thereare millions of pages of web content inthe World Wide Web and your websitegets totally lost in the shuffle, just likethe proverbial needle in the haystack.The site can become non-existent in thecyber arena, if the search engine ignores it,and thus failing to harness the most costeffective and powerful Internet marketingstrategy known as Search engineOptimization (SEO). SEO is the processwhereby a web site, or more specificallya web page or document, is constructedor amended to improve its placementAs you can see from the above snapshot that Google retrieved around 668,000,000 websites having keywords “property buy or sell” in someform or the other in their content. You will be at a great loss if the site you have built is nowhere listed in the top search resultsSEM vis-à-vis SEOAs seen from the above search resultsnapshot, there are two types of searchresults. The ones highlighted in the blackbox are known as organic search resultsand are driven by the SEO strategiesimplemented by the website. The searchresults in terms of Advertisements locatedon the top of the search results or on theright hand side of the search results arePaid Search results/advertisements andfalls in the Search Engine Marketing (SEM)space. Paid inclusion, Pay per click and Payper view are different modes in which SEMoperates.•Paid inclusion– Site’s pages arecataloged and rendered by the searchsite, when they closely match anorganic search.•Paid Placement– Websites pay, tohave its pages shown in responseto a particular search word entered,regardless of how closely the pagematches the entered term and isusually executed as a part of biddingprocess by the Search engines. GoogleAdWords, Yahoo Advertising andMicrosoft AdCenter are some of theexamples for Paid Placement searchengine marketing. Payment modelsrange from, pay per click or pay perview or pay per conversion.Organic SEO is better for long term andlower margin campaigns, but is difficultto target the local market with organicSEO. SEM on the other hand is costly pervisitor or conversion. It is better for shortterm and high margin campaigns anddefinitely has the ability to target localmarkets. SEO requires ongoing learningand optimizations and can take from 2 -4months to show some tangible results.On the other hand SEM is instantaneousand can produce immediate results andimprovements on the organic results aswell. As a thumb rule for any new website,it is always recommended to start with SEMand in parallel focus on SEO strategies andonce you reach the SEO limits, you can stopthe paid results or advertisements. In thiswhite paper I will only be unleashing theconcepts and strategies related to SEO andwill not focus on SEM strategies.Positioning is important..Weclick where our eyes dwell.Many studies done in the past (iProspect,Forrester research, Eyetools etc.) havequoted that•81% of internet users find products &services by searching in popular searchengines like Google, Yahoo and Bing•A top ranking will result in 40 % moretraffic•Nearly 30 % of the searchers click onthe first 4-5 organic search results.•Over 50 % click on only the first two orthree paid advertisements•40 % of people don’t click to thesecond page; 55 % won’t look past thefirst 2 pages of the search results•If ranked below #10 your click throughrates falls dramatically and you arenowhere in the game•Natural search resultsare 80 % less costlyand 65 % moreeffective than paidsearchConsidering all the above,it is quite obvious howmuch importance awebsite should give toSEO. In a nutshell, SEObrings•High Return oninvestment, as it is themost cost effectiveform of internetmarketing•Increases the online brand value byhaving greater visibility and popularityin the cyber world•Attract more online customers anddrive relevant and targeted traffic tothe site•Increased leads, sales, conversions andhigher click through rates (CTRs)•Increased accessibilityHow has SEO evolved?The driving factor for the higher searchrankings have evolved from “quantity ofweb content” to “quality and quantityof web content” to “inbound links fromtrusted websites” and now, to the level of“personalization and social graph of thesearcher”.Below table provides a view of how it hasevolved over years and what are the factorsan organization should ensure to achievehigher rankings in the top search engines.Below table provides a view of how it hasevolved over years and what are the factorsan organization should ensure to achievehigher rankings in the top search engines.Factors impacting search rankingTimelineBefore 2000• Lots of web page content• Search spider friendly• Keyword rich contentFrom 2000 to2010• Quality and keyword rich web page content• Search spider friendly• Lots of inbound links from the trustedwebsites• Promote content to get back links2010 andbeyond• Quality and keyword rich web page content• Search spider friendly• Lots of inbound links from the trustedwebsites• Promote content to get links• Browsing and Searching history of the user• Searcher’s demographics and location• Social following for the content/website• Engage social followers• Latest trends and happeningsWhat do Search spiders like and dislike?Below is the list of SEO likes and dislikes of major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.Likes Dislikes• Correct and Validated HTML• Static pages with keyword rich content• Importance to meta tags like name,description, comments, robots• Keyword density and proximity in bodytext, title tags, meta tags and inboundlinks• Quality Inbound Links with appropriatelink text• Well-designed Site map or quick linkssection for dynamic pages• Usage of robots.txt file• SEO compliant URL’s• Page size < 100~120 KB• Less than 100 links on one page• Frames• Dynamic pages• Excessive usage of Flash, DHTML,JavaScript etc.• Duplicate content• Keyword spamming• Cloaking and redirects• Hidden text and links• Link farms and linking to untrustedwebsitesApproach to SEOAny SEO engagement will have different phases based onwhether the site is new or existing and the intent of thewebsite.•Research the site, customers, competitors, domain etc.and identify the set of priority targeted keywords•Make the website SEO content compliant by targetingthe set of priority keywords in tags such as title, meta,image, URL’s, anchor texts, body, header tags etc. withproper keyword density and proximity•Design and Implement the website to make it searchspider friendly: SEO compliant URL’s, Site maps,navigation links, redirects, robots.txt etc.•Give your site higher rankings by promoting yourwebsite, doing inbound linking programs and alsogetting involved in social media websites to increase thesocial ranking of your website•Continuously monitor the site for search rankingsand plan for continuous optimizations based on thecompetition and the requirements of search engines.SEO work can be divided into4 buckets :1.Keyword and Content Optimization,which is mostly to do withidentification of the right set of prioritykeywords for the website, plan andwrite the HTML content accordingly.Some of the SEO activities in this phaseincludea.Understanding customer’s onlinebusiness strategyb.Researching the market category,customers and competitorsc.Keyword research and selection toensure customer’s website achievesgreater hit rate2.Website Optimization, which dealswith having a search friendly htmlpage, utilizing the HTML tags formaking them keyword rich, generatingSEO friendly URL’s and following thewebsite design to ensure maximumtextual content gets indexed by thesearch engine.Some of the important activities in thisbucket include -a.Writing page title, description, keywordmeta tags to ensure high relevancyrankingb.Incorporating the website relevantkey words in site URL and cross linkingURLs (URL Optimization)c.Writing keyword rich body, titles, imagetags and outbound linksd.Building internal links to help thesearch engines navigate the sitee.Working with mod rewrite - Rewritingthe Dynamic URLsf.Bot-friendly navigation to ensuresearch engines can crawl entire siteg.Generate sitemaps to enable indexingof dynamic pages or content pagesthat are not well linked3.Promotion strategy and Indexation,which deals with submission of sitemaps and URL’s to the search engines,local search providers and directoriesetc. It is also to do with viral marketingwhere organizations focus on buildingmore inbound links from trustedwebsites which in turn increases thesearch ranking of the website. Activitiesto be done as a part of this phase are –a.Building inbound and outbound linkswith proper link density and link ageb.Building inbound links and usingkeywords in the text of page links thatrefer to other pages on customer siteand to any external Internet resourcesc.Writing anchor text to provideadditional relevance to the quality ofa linkd.Using keywords in site navigationmenu links gives additional significanceto the pages to which the links refer4.Monitoring, Maintenance andFurther optimizations, which involvescontinuous monitoring of the websitefor rankings specific to the keywordsand making sure keyword, content andwebsite optimizations are performedon a regular basis to keep the site upin rankings. Promotion strategies alsoplay an important role in this bucketas the quality and quantity of inboundlinks is vital for the search ranking.Some activities related to this bucketincludea.Analysing and responding to site trafficand user feedback once the websitehas been optimizedb.Doing press releases on the news siteswith an exact description of the sitehaving relevant keywords and the siteURL. These releases are crawled by theSearch engine spiders along with themain URL as well.c.Using social networking tools andparticipating in blogs and leaving theinbound linksd.Fine tuning the website. Effective SEOis a continuous activity.e.Websites can be submitted for free ondifferent search engines (e.g. Google,Yahoo, Gigablast, DMOZ and otheropen directories)Evaluation andRecommendation ofOOTB SEO, Web Analyticsmonitoring/measurementtools if requiredSubmission of Sitemaps,URL’s, details to searchengines, local searchengines, map services,yellow pages, directoriesUtilizing Tags (Metakeywords, Title, MetaDescription, ALT for Imagefiles, Comment, Header)Research the Market,Category, and Customers& Competitors onlineMonitor the site everyweek post go live andsuggest further finetuning or modificationsrequired to improve therankings or getting highervisibilityBuild inbound andoutbound links - UsingPress releases, affiliatefeeds, RSS feeds,Blogs, Podcasts, Addwikis, widgets, socialnetworking sites ,publishing tools ,advertisings in classifieds ,Forums, broadcasting etc.SEO Page selectionsstrategies, 301 redirects,Directory Structure &Naming Conventions, Linkcount, Page sizeKeyword(s) researchusing online tools , searchlogs, analytics, tag cloudsfeature of search tools,thesauruses and domainSME’sPaid-Inclusion & Pay perClick Programs, Target/choose specific keywordsand bid for them inonline SEM tools. SpecifyURL’s for the SEM orbuild a creative copy forthe selected keywords.Decide strategy forthe SEM duration, paidinclusion, PPC or PPV orPPA etc. Decide whichsearch engines to targetand when to quit from theSEM strategies.SEO monitoring,tracking and reportingfor- Obstacle analysis,Page Rank-Competitiveposition analysis, LinkAnalysis - Inbound andOutbound Links, SiteIndexation, Keyword andContent Statistics, LogAnalyzer, Traffic from thesearch engines etc.Continuous monitoringfor SEO and SEMand suggest furtheroptimizations tothe content writers,development team,marketing team and theSEM agencyEffective usage of HTML/CSS code. Limiting usageof technology blockingSEO (Flash, Frames,JavaScript, MultimediaFiles), Max Robotcoverage, Internal linkingapproachesSEO-friendly URL’sGenerate Site-mapsSEO Geo-targetingguidelines – Local hosting,Targeted domain names,geo compliant URL’s, locallanguages, local inboundand outbound linksCompetition for theKeyword(s)Keywords placement,proximity and density.Keywords in URLWrite Relevant contentwith proper keyworddensityKeywords & ContentoptimizationWebsiteOptimizationPromotion strategiesand Site indexationMonitoring,Maintenance andfurther optimizationsSEO ApproachSEO best practices for keywords, content and website optimizationThe website architecture, the website code, the keywords, the content, the technology – they all need to be search engine friendly andoptimized in order to achieve higher ranking in the search results.• Page Title• Meta description• Meta keywords• Anchor text• Navigation links• Inbound and Outbound links• Body Content• Keyword density andproximity• Internal links• Heading H1,H2 tags• Images (ALT tag)• Comment tag• Site map• Quick links• Domain Names• URL’s• File Names• Directory Structure• Maximum robot coverage• Link count• Page Size• Validated HTML• Faster loading of the web pageTitle, Meta Description & Meta KeywordsNavigation LinkingH1 & H2 HeadersImage Alt TextBody ContentInternal Links From ContentGlobal Site Map LinkBelow are the areas of SEO optimization for any website.Some of the SEO best practices aroundthese areas are.•Title tag:Each web page should havea different and relevant title. Title tagsinfluence both relevancy and ranking.The title tag must contain the targetkeywords identified for the websiteand also the intent of that specific webpage (Note: This assumes significancesince most search engines use the textof the title as the title of the page inthe search results.) Title tags should beconsistent for whole site, or if that isnot possible then for sub-sections ofsite. Using different format for title tagfor different pages will only confuse theuser on SERPs whereas a consistencyin title pages will help in strong brandrecognition.•Meta Tags:There are different typesof Meta tags in the HTML – name,description, comments, robots etc.which needs to be SEO compliant.•keywords:This may influencethe index of keywords of somesearch engines. Example <METANAME=”keywords” CONTENT =”Searchengine marketing, SEO, rankings,search engine placement, SERP” />•description:The description tag allowsyou to influence the description ofyour page in the crawlers that supportthe tag. Most search engines list thedescription of the page as fetchedfrom the meta-description tag. Metadescription must contain the targetedkeywords and also ensure that eachweb page has unique and relevantmeta description. For example <METANAME=”description” CONTENT=”Thisis a best practice article on SearchEngine Optimization - the process ofimproving the web site elements toensure higher search engine rankings”>•comments:Comments tag is meant tomake notes about the page specificallyabout what is the intent of that pageand what does it contain etc. Somespiders crawl them for keywords.•robots:Use appropriate “index” and“follow” instructions in the robot metatag.

–[<meta name=”robots”content=”index, follow”>] - Usethis, if the crawler needs to indexthis page and continue to crawlthe links on the page. For example:Home Page.

–[<meta name=”robots”content=”noindex, follow”>] - Usethis, if the crawler needs to ignorethis page, but continue to crawl thelinks on this page. For example –Site Map

–[<meta name=”robots”content=”noindex, nofollow”>]- Use this if the crawler needs toignore this page and stop crawlingthe links on this page. For example– a page with sensitive informationwith links to classified information.For dynamically generated pages, populatethe META tags also dynamically and ensurethat they are relevant and unique to thatspecific dynamic generated web page.•Header (H1, H2, H3) tags- The H(x)tags in HTML (H1, H2, H3, etc.) aredesigned to indicate a headlinehierarchy in a document. Thus, an H1tag might be considered the headlineof the page as a whole, whereas H2tags would serve as subheadings,H3s as tertiary-level headlines, and soforth. The search engines have a slightpreference for keywords appearingin heading tags, notably the H1 tag(which is the most important of theseto employ).The title tag of a page,containing the important keywords,can be used as the H1 tag. However,if the title tag is long, a more focused,shorter heading tag using the mostimportant keywords from the titletag can also be used. This helps inreinforcing the title tag and the targetkeywords.•Image file name and ALT tags

-Filename of the image should bedescriptive of the content of the image.If the image is of laptop, then insteadof naming it random123.jpg, it shouldbe named laptop.jpg. Image alt textshould be used to provide informationabout the image. Ideally if the imageis related to content, it also gives achance to use targeted keywords inthe image. Alt text and filename helpin reinforcing the keywords and alsohelps in driving the traffic throughimage search.•Body tag optimization– Keyworddensity is the percentage of times akeyword or phrase appears on a webpage compared to the total number ofwords on the page. In the context ofsearch engine optimization keyworddensity can be used as a factor indetermining whether a web page isrelevant to a specified keyword orkeyword phrase.

–It’s impossible to pinpoint theexact, optimal number of times toemploy a keyword term/phrase onthe page,

–As a thumb the keywords can beused 2 to 3 times on short pages,4 to 6 times on longer ones andnever more than makes sense inthe context of the copy.

–It is recommended that the targetkeywords are present earlier in thedocument.

–Keywords should not be stuffedin document text just to increasethe keyword density. Stuffing ofkeywords is considered spammingand search engines tend topenalize such tactics.

–Keywords in document text havevery little or no effect on pagerankings, so the document textshould be written keeping theconvenience of user in mind, notthe search engine.

–On the other hand, totally ignoringthe keyword in document text isalso a mistake and it should beensured that the keywords areincluded at least once or twice•Navigation and Linking- Ensure all thewebpages are internally linked in thewebsite. Provide links directly to everyimportant page in the website from theHome Page or the landing page, whichwill increase the probability of thespiders following all the links from thehome page and ensuring 100% contentindexing. Submit the home page tosearch engines and alternatively createa sitemap and submit the sitemap tosearch engines. (Most search engineshave screens where a user can submita website address that is desired tobe crawled and also place where XMLsitemaps can be submitted)•Only textual content gets indexedby the Search engine- Minimize theusage of frames, splash, DHTML, javaapplets, flash, rich media, xml and otherplug-ins since search spiders will notbe able to decipher these. When a siteis heavy in such content, ensure usageof appropriate parallel text pages orMeta tags to describe the graphics orthe spider inaccessible sections of thewebsite.•Usage of robots.txt- Use the Robots.txt file on the web server to define thecrawl able areas of the site. This file isgenerally placed in the root level ofthe web server. Specify the parts of theserver that are off limits to the searchengine spider. Place pages/directoriesof pages in the crawlable and noncrawlable folders accordingly.•Registration/login agnostic for thesearch spider- Be aware that a spidercannot crawl across a registration wall.Hence optimally place the registrationwhere required. You can also usethe registration wall from restrictingspiders from accessing sensitive orconfidential pages.•Domain Name- If the domain namecontains the main target keywordsfor which the site is to be optimized,it helps a lot in SEO. If a site is beingbuilt from scratch, then the domainname should be such that it containsthe targeted keyword or keywords. Ifthe domain name contains an exact(or partial) match to a search query,chances are it will show up on the firstpage of the SERPs—at least on Google.Google gives keyword matchingdomains preferential treatment.•Page Load Speed- Site speed is nowan official ranking factor for Googleand other search engines are likelyto follow suit. It means that a pagethat loads slowly will be given a lowerranking compared to a page that loadsfast, all other things being equal. Siteshould be optimized for speed andloading times should be kept as low aspossible.•SEO friendly FLASH implementationguidelines- Until recently, searchengine bots did not have capabilities toread flash but now new developmentsin search bot technology allow searchengines to read text and hyperlinksinside flash content.

–Flash should be used inmoderation. Even thoughsearch bots have acquired somecapabilities to index flash content,basics of SEO are missing fromflash. Adobe Search Engine SDKallows a developer to see how theflash content appears to the enduser. It should be used to test thecrawl ability of the flash content.

–New versions of flash support metatags. These meta tags should beused generously to describe theflash content.

–Search engines currently do notread traced text (using the trace()function) or text that has beentransformed into a shape in Flash(as opposed to actual characters).Only character-based text that isactive in the Flash stage will beread.

–Search engines have the ability tofollow links in Flash, but it is notguaranteed they will be able to doit. They will not, however, followlinks to other Flash .swf files. (Thisis different from loading child.swf files into a parent .swf file.)Therefore, links in Flash shouldalways point to HTML pages, notother .swf files.

–Use of SWFObject: SWFObject isFlash detection code written inJavaScript that checks whether abrowser has the Flash plug-in. Ifthe browser does have the Flashplug-in, the .swf file is displayedsecondary to that detection. If thebrowser does not have the Flashplug-in or the JavaScript to detectit,the primary, alternative contentcontained within <div> files isdisplayed instead. The key here isthat search engine spiders do notrender the JavaScript. They readthe primary content in the <div>tags. This SWFObject should beused to mirror the content of yourFlash .swf file exactly. It should notbe used to add content, keywords,graphics, or links that are notcontained in the file as doing so willresult in a ban from search engine’sindex. The SWFObject JavaScriptcan be downloaded from http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/

–Use of NoScript: NoScript tag canalso be used in place of SWFObject.Content of NoScript tag mustecho that of the Flash .swf movieexactly. It should not be used toadd content, keywords, graphics, orlinks that are not in the movie.•SEO friendly JavaScriptimplementation guidelines-JavaScript can be read by searchengines up to a certain extent.Experiments have shown thatGoogle bot can read the dynamicallygenerated links from JavaScript. Still,use of JavaScript is something thatshould be used in moderation.

–JavaScript code should be placedin an external file, such as external.js. Whenever the required codesare called they are taken from the.js file and executed. The robots.txt should be modified to instructsearch engines that the .js fileshould not be indexed.

–Place the same content from theJavaScript in a no script tag. Ensurethe contents are exactly same aswhat is contained in the JavaScriptand that this content is shown tovisitors who do not have JavaScriptenabled in their browser.•SiteMap guidelines- The Sitemapsprotocol allows a webmaster to informsearch engines about URL’s on awebsite that are available for crawling.A Sitemap is a XML file that lists theURL’s for a site. It allows webmasters toinclude additional information abouteach URL: when it was last updated,how often it changes, and howimportant it is in relation to other URLsin the site. This allows search enginesto crawl the site more intelligently.Sitemaps are a URL inclusion protocoland complement robots.txt, a URLexclusion protocol.

–It should contain only URL’s of allpages (URL’s for individual imagesshould not be submitted) or list ofother sitemaps. Even if individualimage URL’s are submitted theywon’t be indexed.

–If the sitemap is too big it should beseparated it into multiple sitemapsand have a single sitemap indexfile and make a XML format of thesitemap index file.

–A sitemap index file should notcontain more than 1000 sitemaps.

–Use only a single format for allURL’s. For e.g., if the site is specifiedas ww.example.org, then ensurethat the sitemap also contains URLsstarting with www and not simplyexample.org and vice-versa.

–Sitemap must only contain ASCIIcharacters.

–Upper ASCII characters and specialcharacters such as *, $, # are notallowedSite Indexation and SiteSubmission strategiesIf your website or a part of the website isnot getting indexed or crawled by searchengines, it will not be available in thesearch results.Site Indexation with the help ofWebmaster toolsSite Indexation issues should be resolvedfor better placement in search results. Itcan be done with the help of Web mastertools. There may be some part of thewebsite, which is not indexed by searchengine or if you want to remove somepages from getting indexed, webmastertool can be helpful in identifying theseissues. Major search engines, includingGoogle, provide free tools for webmasters.Google’s Webmaster Tools helpwebmasters better control, how Googleinteracts with their websites and get usefulinformation from Google about their site.Google webmaster tool can•Identify the crawl issues in the website.•Change the crawl frequency of yourwebsite.•Inform Google which pages should notbe indexed•Helps you eliminate unwanted dynamicURL’s from getting indexed.•Submitting site map to the searchengine.•Specify preferred domain•Identify HTML issues•Identify any other SEO violationApart from this, submitting sitemap tolocal search engines, map services, yellowpages, directories etc. is helpful.Yahoo!(Yahoo! Site Explorer) and Microsoft (LiveSearch Webmaster Tools)also offer variousfree tools to webmasters for SEO relatedtopics and activities.Submit to Directories:A web directory is something similarto a huge reference library. Directoriesbring targeted traffic. Though the trafficgenerated through directories is verylimited, this traffic is from people who, bytheir own choice, come to the web siteby browsing through categories in thesedirectories. Another important benefitis that these directories are considered“expert” sites by search engines. So,submitting a site in directories increasesits chance of getting better rank in searchresults.Directories can broadly be classified into“Free Directories” and “Paid Directories”.Paid Directories- Paid directorieshave standard submission process andoptimization strategies and they aregiven importance by the search engines.Submitting website link to any paiddirectory is a faster and effective way oflink building. Some of the popular paiddirectories areYahoo! Directory, Business.com, Clora Business directory, Best of theWeb etc. Yahoo is the most popular amongpaid directories.Free/Open Directories- Free directorysubmission is an effective way to geta large number of inbound links. Afree directory will use a keyword whencategorizing your site, providing a naturalcustomized link building profile fromdirectories in your industry. There are manyfree directories available on the web, suchasDMOZ, Boingboing.net, Lii.org etc.Open Directory and Yahoo directory standahead of others in distribution and SEOimportance.•Open Directory Project – DMOZ is oneof the most well-known free directoriesof websites created by volunteereditors. The Open Directory Projectis the largest directory and a hugereference library on the web.•Yahoo! Directory – It is the mostpopular and largest paid directoryowned by Yahoo! Yahoo directory is aneffective way of link building since ithas around 330 million unique visitors,making it a high traffic website. It costsaround $299/year for commercial sites.Generic Guidelines for directorysubmission:•Resolve all broken links, images andmissing pages from the website.•Make sure the description of thewebsite given during submission isreadable and related to the contentof the website. Do not stuff this withkeywords.•Select a suitable category as per yourwebsite. If you have difficulty in findinga suitable category check for yourcompetitors site category and submityour site there.•Constantly check whether your site islisted in the directory. Free directoriestake a bit longer to list a siteSubmit to Local Search engines, Mapservices, Yellow services and InformationProviders:Local Search Guide provided by the YellowPages Association is the best guide forInternet Yellow Pages, vertical directories,and local search engines. Make sure tocheck your listings in each of the sites listedin the guide, and update where necessary.Local Search Guide:

http://www.localsearchguide.orgYellow Pages Association:

http://ypassociation.orgApart from search engines listed above,focus primarily on the local search or mapsearch sections, and you can add/update/edit your listings in them. For example youcan update listings in the Google, Yahoo!,and Bing search Engines at the followingURLsRegister with popular local searchproviders (free)•Google Local Business Center:

http://www.google.com/local/add•Yahoo! Local:

http://listings.local.yahoo.com/•Bing Local Listing Center:https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspxTake care when providing information•Consistency counts•Categories/services are important•As applicable, provide supplementalinformationIn addition to the online directories listedin the Local Search Guide, update yourinformation in any local directory sitesthat are independent of the Local SearchGuide lists. Other Yellow Pages guides maybe dominant for your local area but maynot be listed here. Also check the printedphone directories delivered in the areawhere your business is located, and seewhether they have URLs printed on theircovers where you can audit/update yourinformation.Social Media Marketing and SEOcannot be separatedSocial media marketing is a form ofinternet marketing, which seeks to achievebranding and marketing communicationgoals through the participation in varioussocial media networks. Social medianetworks are primarily Internet and mobilebased tools for sharing and discussinginformation among human beings. Theterm most often refers to activities thatintegrate technology, telecommunicationsand social interaction, and the constructionof words, pictures, videos and audio. Socialmedia sites have good visibility and PageRanks in the search engines and hence,can be an effective link building strategyfor the sites who would like to get higherrankings and increase their visibility andpopularity over the web. SEO and SocialMedia are inseparable. SEO needs Socialmedia Marketing as that is the trusted andreliable way to get more inbound linksand more importantly while doing SocialMedia Marketing, SEO strategies should befollowed so that, there is a benefit to thewebsite or the brand. Enterprises shouldtarget the below components in the socialworld -•Blogs•Forums•Communities•Press Releases•Wikis/Widgets•Media uploads•Virtual worlds•Broadcast/Podcast etc.•Followers/Influencers/Fans on socialsites like Facebook, LinkedIn etc.•Likes/Dislikes on Social Sites likeFacebookSome of the important strategies in thisspace are -Get quality inbound links from socialmedia marketing campaigns•Majority (if not all) of the links thatcome from a social media marketingcampaign are natural links; they’re notreciprocated, bought, or solicitedLeverage social media websites for brandand reputation building•Ask people to talk positively aboutyour site on social media sites likeDigg, MySpace, YouTube, Facebooketc. Beware of the negative effects, assomeone can tarnish your brand aswell.Ranking pages on social media websites•Social media sites rank extremely wellon the search engines. Their domainsare very powerful and with a fewlinks to an internal page, it has a greatshot of ranking, even for competitivekeywords. We might want to consideruploading some organization videos toYouTube or creating a MySpace profileand building a few good links to it.Social media needs SEO•Your success in social media willeventually depend on search rankingsin a blog search tool and the generalsearch results. Maybe it’ll be yourbookmark page, maybe a Twitterpost, or the page itself, but the searchrankings will matterCreate profiles on social media sites•Establish profiles on various socialmedia, and link from your profileon those sites, back to your website. - Digg, Propeller, Flickr, Linkedin,Bloggingzoom, TechnoratiSEO Geo Targeting Guidelines - Isyour site SEO compliant for a globalrollout?Websites rank differently in the searchengine result pages of different countries.Geo targeting refers to the process ofoptimizing a website, such that it gets inthe top position of country specific searchengine. Country specific search enginerefers to local version of search enginelike google.co.in for India or google.hk forHong Kong. The guidelines for targeting aspecific country are given below:•Top-level Domain:A top-level domain(TLD) indicates to the search engines,the location of the site. A .co.uk domainname should be used if the majority ofthe customers are from the UK. A .cndomain should be used if the targetcustomers are mainly from China•Local Hosting:The search enginescan determine the web site’s locationthrough the web hosting. A serverhosted in the country which is targetedis beneficial from SEO point of view.Note that the IP address of the serversshould be of the target country.•Business Address:Placing the localbusiness address in plain text at thefooter of the site can certainly assistGoogle or other search engines indetermining the location of thewebsite.•Language:It helps to have the site’scontent being in the language ofthe country being targeted. It helpsfurther when the copy is optimizedso that for instance, UK English can bedistinguished from US English.•Inbound Links:Efforts should be madeto get lots of inbound links from otherwebsites specific to the country beingtargeted. Inbound links from sameregion play an important role in geotargeting.•Search engine Webmaster Tools:

Under the “Set geographic target”option in your Google WebmasterTools account, choose “associate ageographic location with this site” andpick the preferred country for yourwebsite to geo-target.Avoid Black Hat SEO techniques•Do not use the keywords that are notrelated to the site. Avoid keywordstuffing. Search engines can penalizeyour site, by blocking from their searchresults or reducing the Search Rank.On a parallel note avoid duplicatingcontent with the intention of repeatingkeywords.•Avoid usage of invisible OR hiddentext. Some websites try to mislead thesearch spiders by repeating words ofinterest in smaller fonts or merged withthe background or text overlaid on topof Flash object.•Avoid cloaking or masking the pagecontent. Some web designers programthe page content to be altered to boostrankings when a visit from a spider orcrawler is detected.•Do not focus your efforts on linkexchange programs; as if you get anyinbound or outbound link from a bador untrusted neighborhood, then yourrankings can suffer. Reciprocal linkingis common and generally acceptedwhen not excessive and an attemptis made to provide value to the sitevisitor by leaving genuine inbound andKeywordStungInvisible textContentScrappingDoorway PagesLink FarmingCloakingGoogleBowling/WashingGoogleBomblingBLACKHAT SEOOther very common SEO mistakes•Ignoring HTML tags like Title tag•Identifying and doing SEO for irrelevantkeywords•Repeating keywords to a larger extentin the website•Invalid HTML•URL’s do not have relevant and SEOtargeted keywords•Inbound links from bad neighborhoods•Heavy focus on images and flash andvery less textual content•No Inbound Linking and Social mediastrategyoutbound links.•Do not employ in any off-site tacticsto bring down your competitorsrankings. Examples include; links frombad neighbors, un-stealthy redirects,mass-automated querying. The idea isto make it look to the search engines,as if your competitor is using black-hattechniques and eventually reduce theirrankings or penalizing by blockingcompetitors website.How to plan the SEO work?•For existing sites, fix the high prioritySEO blockers in the initial phase of theimplementation like robot coverage,broken links, duplicate content,redirects, canonical tags, any blackhat techniques used etc. Analyzethe webmaster tools and see if thereare any blockers or issues with thecrawl ability of the site and fix them.Check if there are any rogue inboundlinks which are actually lowering therankings and affecting the SEO.•Fix the tags optimization, site map andURL optimization, directory structure,domains and sub domains based onthe targeted keywords in parallel orafter the SEO blockers are fixed.•Do the URL and site map submissionsto the search engines once the SEOimplementation goes live on the web•Website promotion strategies to startimmediately post go live of the SEOimplementation. In few cases wherethere is not much change in the overallcontent and the keywords, it can startimmediately once the keywords andthe inbound links have been identified.Inbound link strategy will lead togradual improvements in the rankings.•SEO improvements can take from 2weeks to 3 months of time and hencecontinuous monitoring on daily toweekly basis is required to see theimprovements and suggest any furtheroptimizations. Competitor sites arealso analyzed every week to analyzethe competition and make any furtherchanges if required depending on thecompetitor’s strategies.•Social Media marketing is a continuousactivity and should be leveraged to getgood inbound linking and attract moreconsumers to the site via social media.Different strategies like press releasesand new campaigns to be designedintermittently to get the web visibilityand brand name and recognition andto keep the stability in the searchrankings.•Focus on Paid SEO, if the site is a fairlynew site for a short duration or alonger duration depending on the SEMstrategy and the marketing budgets.•SEO will bring the traffic. But it is up tothe site to ensure customer stickinessthrough relevant internal searches,browsing behavior, internal sitestructures, personalization and crosssell/up sell, promotional strategies andproper merchandizing to achieve thedesired conversion.New Trends in SEO•The new SEO strategy :Quality matters,not the Quantity

–Now it’s time to focus less on SEOtricks and more give emphasis ongood online marketing strategies.•More personalized and languagespecific search results from Google:

–Searchers can now see relevantresults in both English as well asin the language they used forsearch query. This will give betteruser experience and break downthe language barrier and improvequality of search. This is one of themost significant changes Googlehas done recently.•SEO for mobile search and Voicesearch:

–Usage of smart phones forsearching is increasing day byday. Mobile and Voice searchis definitely among the fastestgrowing area in search arena. Evensearch patterns change - peopleare opting for voice search thenbrowsing.•Long and more descriptive post willhave an added advantage in rankings:

–Recently Google had done somechanges in algorithm displayingtext snippet about the website onsearch results page. It may nowconsider actual page text insteadof page Meta description, titleor header tag to display the textsnippet on SERP.•Promotion strategies are changing, forexample these days web apps play animp role in online promotions. You tubeis gaining importance as new searchtool and more and more of guestblogging is advantageous.•Reciprocal Links are dead:

–Reciprocal links are of no use nowand search engines don’t giveenough importance to these typesof links. In terms of link juice theymay devalue your links. Earlier itwas very easy to obtain a reciprocallink and SEO experts startedbuilding these links on a rapidrate, however these links were notadding enough SEO value to thebusiness. Google also consideredthis as an act of link farming andpenalized the sites participating inthis.•Social signals like Facebook “Like”,twitter” re tweets” etc. are given moresignificance by search bots.Conclusion: The SEO Process FlowYou have to do this beforeQuality/RelevantContentTargetingKeywordsWebsiteOptimizationLink BuildingSocial MediaMarketingContent andHTMLoptimizationKeywordresearch,KeywordPlacementURL optimization,Bot accessibility,Directory structure,Internal Links etc.Link building strategyas per your domain,Directory submission,paid inclusion, UsingPress releases,aliate feeds, RSSfeeds ,CompanyBlogs etcSocial media,viral marketing,Brand buildingThe SEO ProcessOn Site Optimization O Site OptimizationAbove figure depicts how enterprisesshould apply SEO strategies to theirwebsite. On site SEO optimizationcomprises of Content optimization,Keyword and market research and websiteoptimization from SEO perspective.However Off page optimization focuseson website promotion and link buildingactivities. It is very important to makeyour website SEO compliant beforestepping into Link building or social mediamarketing because a well optimizedwebsite is more relevant to user’s searchquery and its popularity is determined byfactors like inbound links, social mediaspread etc. Hence, the combination of bothmakes your site relevant and in turn, intoa possibility of higher rankings on searchengines results pages.References1.EBook: “The Art of SEO” by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, and Jessie C. Stricchiola2.Website:www.seomoz.org

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